PRN Leadership

“The Commission embraces this concept of lifelong learning and all it implies.  More specifically, it is the Commission’s view that British Columbians can no longer afford to consider education as something that begins and ends in formal institutions for learning.  The complexities of modern life and the changing demands of careers in business, industry, and the professions make it imperative to educate ourselves broadly throughout our lives and, by learning new skills and bodies of knowledge, to adapt to the changing world around us.  In other words, education is not something we can leave to schools; it is a responsibility to learning shared by each of us and the community to which we belong.”

Does anyone remember which “commission” this was?  Some hints…  the year was 1988, the commissioner was Barry Sullivan and it was targeted at kids who were expected to graduate in the year 2000.

I’m nerdy enough to have been reading through the report’s introduction last night.  I couldn’t help but be pleased that, in comparison to many districts, our schools and our community are working together on behalf of kids more and more all the time.  Key people are beginning to question the traditional industrial model of education.

Please watch the 5 minute video from ASCD about the “New Compact.” (It was tweeted recently by my equally nerdy wife…)  The video asks some questions that we’ve been asking recently and it wonders why “too many kids are dropping out, checking out or coasting through.”

Here is the link: http://tiny.cc/LkdiQ

The Sullivan Commission asked the questions too.  I believe we have finally started looking for answers instead of making excuses for staying with the traditional model.
What do you think?

A month or so ago at a Leadership Team Meeting (and just prior to that… during the Leadership Academy) we talked about the importance of energy in a school and in a district.  Brighouse and Woods (1999) divide people into three groups… energy creators, energy neutrals, and energy consumers.  They suggest that the goal of leaders is to become more like “energy creators” and to cultivate energy creation in other leaders.

It’s timely that the following article was on Dennis Sparks’ blog recently.

“Leaders in their everyday behaviors can make an enormous difference in activating and renewing the energy that people bring to their work.” —Jane Dutton

Leaders’ energy has a profound effect on the energy and motivation of the school community. When leaders cultivate their energy and encourage others to do the same, they fulfill their responsibilities as stewards of organizational energy. Important sources of energy for leaders and for school communities are connections to their most important purposes, to others within and outside the community, and to their own inner resources.

In The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz emphasize the energy that is generated when individuals connect their work to their deepest purposes so that they believe that what they are doing really matters. Awareness of and tangible progress toward those purposes is a vital source of energy for leaders and for community members.

Vital and sustaining connections to others are a second source of energy for leaders and the school community. Jane Dutton, author of Energize Your Workplace: How to Create and Sustain High-Quality Connections at Work, told me in an interview for the Journal of Staff Development that there are no formulas for such connections and that “. . . it is the simple things, like being present or being more authentically who they are, that produces a long-lasting impact on their organizations. . . . What’s important is that we give ourselves license to be present, to bring ourselves emotionally and physically to the interaction.”

A third source of energy for leaders and school communities is their sense of connection to their own unique “greatness” and talents. To that end, Dutton encourages leaders to conduct a “Reflected Best Self Assessment” in which they ask 20 friends, family members, or colleagues to each tell them three stories about how they added value to their lives. Leaders then write a “reflected best self portrait” which describes them at their best and set goals to make changes in their lives based on what they learned. According to Dutton, leaders who engage in this process “experience a deep affirmation of their unique greatness” and “see themselves as being much more efficacious.”

Strengthen your leadership practice by . . .

• identifying a specific way you connect with your fundamental purposes, with colleagues, and/or with your “best self” to increase your personal energy and that of the school community. Share your intention with others to generate social support.

An interesting article…   It suggests ways to use social media as a teaching and learning tool:

http://tinyurl.com/om4to9

Oh Canada!  Makes you proud to be from this country…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQbQGn_rqTw

Program uses foreign-language concepts to teach reading.

http://sbne.ws/r/3Vsb

“Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.”

This is a quote by a British actress named Jane Howard.  It reminds me what Thomas Sergiovanni says about schools.  He says (and I agree) that they should not be run like a business… instead they should operate more like families, congregations and/or communities.  I guess now he could add clans, networks, tribes etc.

Technology:The Wrong Questions and the Right Questions… by  Ira Socol of Michigan State University.

This article asks some very good questions and provides some advice for educators.  For example:

“We must abandon the one-way classroom communication system, be it the lecture or use of the “clicker,” and teach with conversation and through modeling learning itself.  We must lose the idea that “attention” means students staring at a teacher, or that “attendance” means being in the room, and understand all the differing ways humans learn best.”

Please take the time to check out the whole article:

http://tinyurl.com/lx7yzq

“We Are the World”…  This remake of the 80’s tune on behalf of Haiti will put a tear in your eye…

http://tinyurl.com/yg2pttj

Do what you can…

A New Jersey principal tweeted this article by Alan November.  November suggests that teachers should let students use online social tools.

http://bit.ly/cbcliG

“Appreciation is a wonderful thing… it makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.”

Voltaire